Good God, the Trailer for ‘Toy Story 4’ Is Just Unbelievably Depressing

Good God, the Trailer for ‘Toy Story 4’ Is Just Unbelievably Depressing

March 19, 2019 Off By Nicole Clark

I can watch the sizzle reel of Big Sad Moments from Pixar movies in my head like I'm seeing them in real time: The beginning sequence in Up, Bing Bong sacrificing himself in Inside Out, the few seconds when Wall-E doesn't recognize Eva after she rebuilds him, literally the entirety of Coco. I mean, just look at this shit:

I am legitimately crying right now. Cool, cool, very cool.

Anyways, no franchise does Big Sad better than Toy Story, a series that's about making a child happy and then inevitably being tossed aside by the person you love the most in this world when they grow up. Honestly, I can barely fuck with these movies at this point. They're that bleak.

Well, the official trailer for Toy Story 4 came out Tuesday, and this thing is, somehow, shaping up to be even sadder than the first three.

Let's begin here. Fuck:

Woody crumpled on the ground
Image by Disney

Toy Story 4 is about Forky, a doll some kid made out of a spork and thereby blessed with the gift of life. Unfortunately, Forky is very, very sad right out of the gate, afflicted by a devastating combination of existential dread and crippling self-doubt.

"Why am I alive?" he asks Woody in the trailer, like some kind of tiny, plastic Nietzsche. "I am not a toy. I was made for soup, salad, maybe chili, and then the trash." He then literally defenestrates himself, so, yeah: pretty fucking bleak.

Forky
I'm not okay. Image by Disney

This child is either crying or otherwise visibly devastated during, like, 90 percent of her appearances in this trailer. Pixar... why have you done this.

Sad child
Image by Disney

T-rex's arms are too short to ever be able to hug anyone. He is incapable of the most basic expression of affection there is. If that's not sad, I don't know what is.

T Rex and Buzz Lightyear
Image by Disney

Being an adult is basically like being an abandoned toy, isn't it? It's about realizing you're a speck on an incomprehensibly giant planet that doesn't care about you, doesn't cater to your emotional wellbeing in any way, and seems hellbent only on making you miserable. It's that sense of compounding loss—a series of raw memories rendered inaccessible, an understanding of how the joy of making friends always yields to the bitterness of losing friends, or else, the glacially slow drift you make away from someone that's almost imperceptible until you see a photo of them on—oh, shit, I'm sorry, I got a little carried away there. This trailer is just a lot.

Case in point:

Forky and Woody
Image by Disney

Look at these eyes. Look at the pain behind these eyes. Woody looks like a man who stubbed his toe, looked at his checking account and saw $16 in it, got dumped, and then found out his father died. Please—somebody, anybody—help.

Andy
Their cowboy hats match. Image by Disney

Oh good, Andy is back, the boy who betrayed our extremely dejected heroes when he grew up and disappeared from their lives forever. Thank you, Pixar, for this uplifting flashback.

Andy and Bo Peep
Image by Disney

Silhouettes? Check. Rain? Check. A hand placed on a chin, a tender gesture that unmistakably signifies "I am sorry you are crushingly depressed right now, and I will tell you that things are going to get better, but honestly, man, I'm not sure?" Check. How is this a movie for children?

And then, an entire box of tissues later, at long last, the trailer is over:

Toy Story Four Title
Image by Disney

Thank god for that. Time to schedule an extra appointment with my therapist!!!!!!!! But yeah, Toy Story 4 everybody! Get psyched! It comes out on June 21!

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